Monthly Archives: November 2013

One of the unique opportunities the 2013 Las Vegas Comic Expo afforded its attendees was the opportunity to play a brand new board game, long before the public will get a chance to play it. Las Vegas resident Anthony Carillo brought Big Angry Monsters to the Expo on Saturday and has now brought the game to Kickstarter. Big Angry Monsters will be familiar to any kaiju fans: rival monsters rampage through a city, leaving a trail of devastation in their wake. It’s been done before by Privateer Press’s Monsterpocalypse and this new game’s Big Angry Monsters sure have the look and feel of IELLO’s King of Tokyo characters, but Carillo has managed to combine other gaming mechanics and crisp character designs from Jared Moratis of BeastPop Artworks into one cohesive package. The game is fast, furious, tactical, and fun.

Carillo is seeking to raise $20,000 on Kickstarter to fund the game’s manufacturing from Panda Game Manufacturing in China with a deadline of December 16. For $50.00, US backers get a copy of the standard edition of Big Angry Monsters, plus a Kickstarter exclusive monster, the Pollo Mutado, as well as all stretch goals. Several top-tier pledges allow for the creation of new Monsters designed by backers with $1000 to design an exclusive monster and $1500 for a monster that will ship with every copy of the game.

The Big Angry Rules of Big Angry Monsters

Big Angry Monster Dave the Ape, A Former Smog Technician

As for the rules of the game, at its core, Big Angry Monsters is a game of grid-based combat using six or seven dice to resolve movement, attacks, and defense for the cardboard monster standees. The various kaiju battle in a randomized island city and can only regain health by destroying the surrounding environment. Unlike King of Tokyo, the dice in Big Angry Monsters do not allow a monster to heal, but do allow for a drain energy attack on your opponents’ monsters. And also unlike King of Tokyo, there is only one path to victory: a player wins by knocking out all of the opponents’ monsters.

Along the way though monsters gain experience and can actually level up, which unlocks special Super Moves attacks like Suplexes and Throws. With a Suplex, gained at Level 2, your monster can lift up an opponent’s monster and smash it down onto a neighboring building for additional damage. Attaining Level 3 opens up the option of Throwing a rival monster up to 2 squares away. Additionally when a monster maxes out its level, the player then gets an additional d6 to roll.

The Rulebook Prototype and Art Direction

While the rulebook prototype brought to Las Vegas Comic Expo back in late September had a number of typos, it provided a short selection of solid rules. Carillo turned to Erik Pepper to co-author the game’s introduction and Pepper and Carillo have knocked the ball out of the park. The introduction is light, humorous, and will get any players quickly into the spirit of the game. As for the game’s artwork, while the base monsters were designed by Jared Moratis, Anthony Carillo has turned to another monster creator, Squeedgemonster, to fill in the remainder of the game’s artwork including Power Cards and Location Tiles, as well as the Pollo Mutado Kickstarter Exclusive.

All Big Angry Monsters artwork copyright Anthony Carillo and used with permission.